From California
by Eines Zwei Drei
Summary: A letter arrives for Rory.


A/N- This takes off at the end of Season Three, and am basically pretending that Season four didn't happen at all. This is based on the song: From California By: The new amsterdams. Tell me if you like it.

_Uncommon amount of the time at home, hardly a word on the telephone._

_Finally find the time to get to know you._

_Still mapping it out like a master plan, something to do with my idle hands._

_Write you a letter addressed from California._

_It's vivid and strong in my memory, an absence that smacks of abandoning._

_It let to the battle that ultimately destroyed us._

_I'm nothing if I don't know your mistakes, the pill is as bitter as I can take._

_It twists like a blade when I leave for California._

_I hope that you know this is killing me, it's all in the name of the family._

_We only can play the cards the dealer dealt us._

_The end of the cycle is closing in, with you I see new hope begin again._

_There suddenly seems to be promise in California._

_As heavy as all this is weighing me, believe in the words I am promising._

_I'm still here for her._

_The distance is only an obstacle, hardly a match for a miracle._

_I'm finally ready to go to California._

__

Dear Rory:

Perhaps you don't want to hear from me, perhaps you don't want to think about me, and its all understandable. I left you. I've been left enough by people who love me in my life, that I know I hurt you, perhaps in a place you don't even want to speak about, but it's probably there deep down. I didn't leave for my Father, I didn't leave to hurt you, to prove your mother right, to prove to Luke that I was never worth it. I left for me. There came a time in my life, where I did not know myself anymore. There are things in my past, that I've never told anybody, I thought maybe when I left New York that all those horrible painful memories would somehow disapate on the bus ride. They did for awhile, but then I woke up one morning with this feeling in my chest that I thought I had left far behind. Even now, I couldn't write the words, let alone say them aloud. It still hurts. I thought going to California would somehow clear my head, maybe there was something there, a relationship with my father. Someone I used to dream about when I was young, who come and save me. Who would come into my room one morning and we would disapear somewhere, exotic, the lush backdrops of the books I lost myself in. It never happened, and that day when he showed up, I hated him. He never came, he never saved me, and I realized that maybe I realized I was beyond saving. I didn't want to hurt you, it killed me to leave you. You were the only person in my life that I have loved, but it reaches a point. Love isn't a fairytale from a Jane Austen novel, love is hard, and bitter, and wonderful and beautiful. I don't know where I'll be by the time you get this letter, you'll be at Yale, discussing 18th century poets in large halls, and drinking in New Haven bars, meeting new people and forgetting me. I'll be somewhere, wherever this bus station takes me. But know that wherever I am, I will always love you.

**Jess.**

He didn't dare re-read the letter for fear it would end up in the garbage can sitting so readily beside him, he wrote the address, feeling a twinge writing the word, Stars Hollow. He affixed the stamp and wrote in the return address, California. He dropped it in the box outside the bus station and slung his army bag over his sholder and walked over to the ticket counter, carefully counting his money.

"Hey honey! How was your class?" Lorelai asked picking up the phone eagerly.

"It was great! An entire class about 19th century Russian authors, it was brilliant! I'm just on my way home now, and then we can go to Grandma's and Grandpa's together."

"Alright hon, I'll see you in about an hour." Lorelai replied flipping through the mail. There it was, the letter that Rory had inconspicuously checked the mailbox for all summer, the clean, precise, distinctly boyish writing, from California.

Rory sat in her old room, stripped from its most beloved object, that now resided in a dorm room at Yale. She turned the envelope over in her hands. Ran her finger over the writing. She slit the letter open, and read, and re-read. She promised she wouldn't cry. He had left her.

"Hon?" The door knocked.

"Come in Mom."

"Well?"

She looked up at her, her eyes a little watery.

"He didn't leave a return address."


End file.
